Feel-bad story of the day: Paralympians appear to be cheating

A gruesome performance-boosting technique amongst disabled athletes, which can involve deliberately breaking bones or sabotaging personal medical equipment, is being probed at the Paralympics.

As with the Winter Olympics in February, a record number of competitors are being screened for use of banned performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids and blood enhancers, said Doug MacQuarrie of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport.

In addition, some 50 Paralympians with spinal cord injuries are being assessed for “boosting” blood pressure.

The pressure spike, called autonomic dysreflexia, can improve an athlete’s performance by as much as 15 per cent.

Such athletes feel no pain below their injury, and have been known to break a toe, wear pressure stockings, compress their testicles by sitting on ball bearings, or block a urinary catheter to over-fill bladder.

The distress is painless but triggers a physical rise in blood pressure, said physician-scientist Dr. Andrei Krassioukov, leader of the “boosting” research team.

He said boosting can also be lethal, by triggering a stroke or heart attack - and it has been banned by world sports bodies since 1994.

“But we cannot crucify Paralympic athletes for the boosting phenomenon,” warned Krassioukov, who works with the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre here and at the University of British Columbia’s medical school.

“It’s totally different in comparison to ... use of drugs by perfectly healthy people. People with disabilities are at a horrible disadvantage, and they’re trying to normalize their body function.”

Spinal cord injuries cause people to lose the ability to naturally adjust their arterial blood pressure and heart rate, said Krassioukov.

“They are at disadvantage, to have at resting state a low blood pressure ... this is one of the horrific results of spinal cord injury.”

Able-bodied people who feel sluggish “will have a coffee. People with spinal cord injury will do something more outrageous -- they want to feel better and they want to perform better. They’re using this abnormal response to increase blood pressure,” Krassioukov told AFP.

Many sit-sports pit athletes with spinal cord injuries against athletes with intact central nervous systems but with amputated legs, for example. With normal blood pressure amputees can “perform better than in a person with spinal cord injury,” said Krassioukov.

“This is one of the horrific results of spinal cord injury. I believe they could still compete against one another,” he said, but with more research, “spinal cord injuries will have to be categorized differently”.

The World Anti-Doping Agency website lists substances or methods, linked with enhancing performance that “violate the spirit of sport,” that are prohibited worldwide.

Despite one more doping case from the Olympic games now being investigated, experts agreed there have been fewer cases of doping during the Vancouver Olympics, and so far at the Paralympics, than at previous games.

During the Olympics Slovak ice hockey player Lubomir Visnovsky and Russian ice hockey player Svetlana Terenteva received reprimands, but not bans.

Don Catlin, an American a member of the IOC medical commission told AFP one more doping investigation is now underway.

A gruesome performance-boosting technique amongst disabled athletes, which can involve deliberately breaking bones or sabotaging personal medical equipment, is being probed at the Paralympics.

As with the Winter Olympics in February, a record number of competitors are being screened for use of banned performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids and blood enhancers, said Doug MacQuarrie of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport.

In addition, some 50 Paralympians with spinal cord injuries are being assessed for “boosting” blood pressure.

The pressure spike, called autonomic dysreflexia, can improve an athlete’s performance by as much as 15 per cent.

Such athletes feel no pain below their injury, and have been known to break a toe, wear pressure stockings, compress their testicles by sitting on ball bearings, or block a urinary catheter to over-fill bladder.

The distress is painless but triggers a physical rise in blood pressure, said physician-scientist Dr. Andrei Krassioukov, leader of the “boosting” research team.

He said boosting can also be lethal, by triggering a stroke or heart attack – and it has been banned by world sports bodies since 1994.

“But we cannot crucify Paralympic athletes for the boosting phenomenon,” warned Krassioukov, who works with the GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre here and at the University of British Columbia’s medical school.

“It’s totally different in comparison to … use of drugs by perfectly healthy people. People with disabilities are at a horrible disadvantage, and they’re trying to normalize their body function.”

Spinal cord injuries cause people to lose the ability to naturally adjust their arterial blood pressure and heart rate, said Krassioukov.

“They are at disadvantage, to have at resting state a low blood pressure … this is one of the horrific results of spinal cord injury.”

Able-bodied people who feel sluggish “will have a coffee. People with spinal cord injury will do something more outrageous — they want to feel better and they want to perform better. They’re using this abnormal response to increase blood pressure,” Krassioukov told AFP.

Many sit-sports pit athletes with spinal cord injuries against athletes with intact central nervous systems but with amputated legs, for example. With normal blood pressure amputees can “perform better than in a person with spinal cord injury,” said Krassioukov.

“This is one of the horrific results of spinal cord injury. I believe they could still compete against one another,” he said, but with more research, “spinal cord injuries will have to be categorized differently”.

The World Anti-Doping Agency website lists substances or methods, linked with enhancing performance that “violate the spirit of sport,” that are prohibited worldwide.

Despite one more doping case from the Olympic games now being investigated, experts agreed there have been fewer cases of doping during the Vancouver Olympics, and so far at the Paralympics, than at previous games.

During the Olympics Slovak ice hockey player Lubomir Visnovsky and Russian ice hockey player Svetlana Terenteva received reprimands, but not bans.

Don Catlin, an American a member of the IOC medical commission told AFP one more doping investigation is now underway.

When my assistant said there was a call from the White House, I picked up, said 'Hello' and started to ask if this was a prank

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